


Caution

by MaddiB98



Category: Maximum Ride - James Patterson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 15:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10744395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddiB98/pseuds/MaddiB98
Summary: a girl has escaped the military facility she has been held at her whole life. she seeks freedom, her captors seek her, one soldier is caught in the middle of trying to find her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> my first Ao3 post! this isn't really based on anything. i love sci fi and government conspiracy fiction, i hope you enjoy!

We’ve come into contact with her multiple times. Caution: danger.

I had seen her once, once before. She was fast, quick enough to fool me – and I thought I had seen it all. I worked for a large company run by a very small group of people and we and one objective: catch the ones that escape.  
What people do not realize is how good they really have it and I’ll tell you why. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is not knowing that the country is not run by the president or even congress. Ignorance is not knowing that the oligarchy that pulls our country’s strings has been doing biological and chemical experiments for years. Ignorance is not knowing that these experiments were designed to mass produce weapons of mass destruction. Ignorance is not knowing that these experiments were done on people.  
Innocent citizens, usually children, because they would adapt easier to the experiments than any adult ever could.  
My job was to clean up the mess.  
Like I said, ignorance is bliss.  
My conscious was relatively clear, due to the large sum of money I found in my bank account every two weeks.  
I was a soldier. I was doing what I had to do to serve my country. I was chosen several years ago by my superiors today for my excellent potential and potency. I was by far the youngest man in my battalion, taken straight from a war zone to prove myself in this new area. Hopefully, we could end all future wars with what was created in these labs, on these military bases.  
What these little monstrosities that we had to catch did not understand was that their sacrifice ultimately led to the United States strength. We kept them in line, trained them, and if we had to, we killed them.  
Ignorance is bliss. 

We had not had eyes on her for about a month. She was smart. We figured that she destroyed her tracking chip a long time ago, determined to never be caught. That is when my battalion stepped in.  
The first time and only time I had seen her, she was in her room, staring at me. Honestly, she freaked me out. She didn’t scare me, just freaked me out.  
The room she and other prototypes like her occupied weren’t much. There was a small bathroom, small shower, small sink. A bed lay in the middle of her bedroom, in view of a window to monitor her day and night. Like animals at the zoo.  
She loomed. I guess that was the affect they were going for when they created her. She was one of the older experiments. When the proto-soldiers reached a certain age, my battalion began basic soldier training with them – which made her inherently more dangerous.  
“How old is she?” I asked when I stopped to peer in on her. Her crystal blue eyes locked onto mine – seeing almost all the way through me.  
“Oh…her,” Charlie, one of my closer friends in the battalion glanced into her cage. He rubbed at the ginger scruff on his face.  
“If I remember right, she’s our oldest… I think she’s about 21.”  
Only a few years younger than myself. My whole life, the government had been experimenting on its own citizens, and I never knew.  
But there she was – the product of years of work and time and billions of dollars, alive and well, and… strange.  
She was strange.  
Maybe it was because she looked so human to me. Her eyes were like mine; she did not just see, she peered into things. Her hair was black as pitch and fell around her face in a wild mane. Her body was small and slender; I don’t think they were ever fed as much as they should be. But they needed to be weak so they couldn’t escape. 

I shook now, just as I shook then when seeing her haunting figure for the first time.  
She was close.  
CLASH – a car behind me flew across the alley way.  
BANG – a rusty dumpster sprung to life, jumping in front of my half of the battalion, blocking us off. We were cut off from our other half, like fish in a barrel, we were easy targets. Trapped.  
“Now you know how it feels.” An unfamiliar, chilling voice hit my ears. I shuddered again.  
In a blast of yellow fire, she appeared on top of the dumpster in front of us. She towered six feet over us, her body still slender as I remembered the first time I saw her. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail though, revealing her entire face to us.  
Scars I had never seen before traced from her left temple, down her eye, and to her chin. The fierce blue of her left eye was dull in comparison to the unscathed, glittering gem of the other.  
“Hello, girl.” Colonel Martin was standing closest to the dumpster, staring up at her.  
The moonlight lit her up from behind, like a spot light. Each soldier had in night vision contacts, allowing me to see her eyes narrow in annoyance.  
“I have a name,” she said, her head tossing back. “What are you going to do to me, Colonel Martin? Lock me back up again?”  
“If you don’t cooperate, I’ve been told to kill you.”  
Her eyes widened – the good one more so than the bad one.  
“You’re kidding.”  
“No, I’m not. Just come on. You’re causing a lot of trouble with this excursion you’re on, and trouble is money. Let’s go kiddo”  
“I’m not a child. I’m 22 years old,” she walked like a wildcat, stalking its prey. Although, she had begun to lose some of her composure. She gracefully sat on the edge of the dumpster, still looming over Colonel Martin, but now in a much more vulnerable pose.  
“I’m not going back, Martin. You know that, don’t you?”  
Colonel Martin sighed, and nodded his head, “You know I don’t want it to be like this.”  
She nodded, “you can try...” she leapt to her feet, “but you can’t kill what’s already dead.”  
Sparks flew from her fingertips, and in a haze of smoke and bullets, she was gone.  
Chaos. They called her Chaos.


	2. Chapter 2

What the hell was that? The phrase ran over and over in my head.   
Our plane touched down less than an hour away from where she had been spotted. We figured she would prefer to hide in and blend into cities. Back on base again, empty handed.   
The rest of the battalion had been talking amongst themselves, all avoiding the Colonel.   
“Sir,” I found myself saying, “If you don’t mind me asking – what the hell just happened? Why weren’t we properly briefed?”  
Colonel Martin whipped around, a hard frown on his face, “Because, I thought this battalion was better than it was. Turns out I was wrong.”   
“Everyone,” Martin barked, “meet me in the briefing room. No one sleeps until she is caught.”

Twenty men sat around a mile-long mahogany table. Men like myself, all from different walks of life, just serving their country. Everyday was just another day at work.   
The holographic screen lit up in front of our eyes at the front of the room. Colonel Martin flipped through the holograms from the back of the bland meeting room.   
Up popped a mugshot of a young girl, with pasty skin, black hair, and ruby red lips. She was maybe fifteen or sixteen. Just a kid. The mugshot was pre-scar.   
“She is experiment 7. Of all the prototypes you have trained or seen, she is the oldest and the only one of her generation to survive. After ten years of attempting to alter DNA for the super soldier initiative, 7 was made and the only one to live for several years before the others were created. She calls herself Chaos.”  
The photo shifted from a mugshot to a photo of her, Chaos, controlling fire. The scar was present in the picture. I took it upon myself to assume this was the most recent picture of her.   
“She is very smart. I don’t know why they make these things so damn smart, but she is absolutely brilliant. She could read and talk in paragraphs by a year and a half old,” Colonel Martin paused, seeming to get lost in the picture of Chaos.   
In a moment, he had shaken it away. “She can use any gun. She isn’t invincible, but like I said, she’s damn smart. As far as being a super soldier,” he referenced to the screen, “she controls fire. At first, she could only control fire that was already produced. Now, she can produce it herself.”  
“What about the dumpster sir? And the car?” Alex, a fair haired, built, ex-SEAL called out from behind me. “Are you telling me that tiny girl pushed a dumpster?”  
Colonel Martin, stone-faced, shot a file forward to the holographic screen. A video popped up. He pressed play.  
Chaos, a little younger, was handcuffed to a table, her black mane falling into her face. Her ruby red lips were drawn in a thin line. Her blue eyes were angry – yet she didn’t let the emotions reach her face.   
“I don’t see the point in this,” she said, quietly seething.  
“Break the cuffs,” an unknown voice from behind the camera instructed her.  
Instantly, the cuffs turned bright red.   
“NO!” The voice yelled. She flinched slightly.  
“Do not burn them, break them.”  
“I’m not strong enough yet,” she snapped, almost in a snarl.   
“You’ll never be strong if you don’t practice. Practice. Use the muscles or they will never get stronger.” I knew that voice – it was Colonel Martin himself.   
Chaos huffed and readjusted herself in the chair. She inhaled and exhaled several times. Her body stiffened, her eyes focused on the handcuffs.   
SNAP.  
The video stopped. An unmoving image of Chaos was left on the large screen, her eyes almost shining. It looked like hope.   
Colonel Martin started a walk to the front of the room, “she can move things with her mind. Some of you that have trained her have seen her move small things. The reason I didn’t mention it was because I didn’t think she was as strong as she is. I didn’t think she would try to use it because she was weak in her ability.”  
“Listen to me, and be cautious. She killed four people by the time she turned seven. She is dangerous. She’s not afraid to kill you. The point is, her power is essentially limitless.”  
I looked around the room at the men just like me. We grew up normal. I knew what my job entailed, but I still almost couldn’t believe it. This girl moved things with her mind.   
One thing was for certain. These men got what they wanted – they got a super soldier. 

Men were instructed to work in shifts, trying to devise the best way to catch Chaos. My first shift was at home, sleeping off the day before and preparing mentally for the day after.   
I cracked open a beer and fell onto the couch in my apartment where I lived alone. Well, not totally alone.   
My dog, Triton, came running up to me as soon as I hit the couch. Triton was my best friend, and a beast of a dog. The white German Shepherd was like a stealthy ghost, and the best sidekick a soldier could ask for. I put on a movie, fed the beast, and went back to the couch for rocky night of sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

“What’s the plan so far?” I said, standing over a table of maps, less than twelve hours after falling asleep.   
“We already have people interviewing the staff members. Seeing if they know anything personal about her,” Alex, the ex- SEAL, stated.   
Charlie jumped in, “We’ve been reviewing her training videos and security cameras. We’ve started to assume that while she was being trained, she was holding back her actual strength to throw us off. She didn’t want us to see what she was capable of.”   
Another man in my squad walked into the room as I surveyed the maps of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. At any point, she could be anywhere.   
“Alex, Charlie, Ryan,” we all looked up at the sounds of our names. It was the very big, very black, Scott.  
“Yeah Scott?” I answered.   
“She’s got a weakness.”  
The three of us were on Scott’s heels like the hounds of hell when finally, he came to a dead halt in front of the dormitories.   
“Scott, what is this weakness?” I questioned him as he stared in at a male proto soldier.  
“Yeah man, what’s the deal with dragging us down here?” Charlie asked.  
Scott pointed, “this is her weakness. This kid.”   
It was nearing 3 am, so the kid was asleep, but he had dark hair and was probably sixteen or seventeen. Like I said, just a kid. This boy could have been anyone’s son. Where was he from? What were his abilities? By the time I was his age, I liked movies and girls and music. What did he have?  
“Scott, how is this kid the linchpin in our investigation here?” Alex asked, exasperated.   
“She’s going to come back for him and when she comes back, we’ll detain her.”  
We were walking back to the planning room now, moving slowly together.   
“What makes you so sure?” Alex asked Scott.   
Scott shrugged, “maybe its intuition. But on the security feed, they were together a lot. They would choose to be together than to be with others. Or she would pull him aside to talk to him. They were together when they could be. So, why wouldn’t she come back for him?”  
“If she’s as smart as she is, why would she come back when she knows it would be stupid? If she really is as smart as they say she is, then she would know to stay away,” Charlie yawned, rubbing his eyes.   
“If they really are close, then he would know the most about her. Let’s interview the boy,” I chimed in, “Let’s see what he has to say about this.”

I watched Scott enter the interrogation room around 6 am. The boy, up until that moment, was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The boy had darker, curly hair and looked like he had just walked off a beach in the Mediterranean. When he heard the knob jiggle, he immediately straightened up in his chair – a composed soldier at sixteen years old.   
“Good morning, 03.”  
03 is his name, I thought to myself.   
03 smiled, “You know that’s not my name.”  
Scott must have trained 03 before. I never really remembered the soldiers I trained, only their abilities. Although, I was never too friendly with the soldiers. It wasn’t my preferred style on training.  
“Okay, Ody,” Scott smiled, “do you know anything about Chaos?”  
Ody’s smile grew wider, “She got away, didn’t she?”  
Scott raised an eyebrow, “was her escape planned?”  
Ody went from a smiling, goofy teenager to a stone wall in less than a second. These kids were soldiers, they knew how to hide information.  
“I don’t know sir.”  
“Let’s talk about you Ody, what super abilities do you possess?”  
“Sir, I can read the minds of others and teleport.”  
Like the X-Men, I thought. Except real.   
“Do you know where she is going?”   
“I don’t know sir.”  
“Is there anything she wanted in particular?”  
“Her freedom, sir.”  
Scott nodded. That was a character flaw amongst the prototypes, they still desired freedom.  
“Do you think she'll come back for you?” Scott implored casually.   
Ody rolled his eyes, one of the first unprofessional displays I'd seen in the whole interview. He scoffed, “Pardon me sir, but that's a silly question.”  
Scott looked confused, “why soldier?”  
Ody threw off the plain grey t-shirt he was wearing. For a 16-year-old, he was built. I don't know what they fed them, but he was already built like a soldier. I guess they were made that way. He didn't pull off his shirt just for fun though. What he wanted us to see were the dark lines crossing his skin. Across his chest, like butterfly wings over his lungs, lines of black were tracing through his veins.  
“I'm already dead.”   
Scott sighed, placing two fingers on the bridge of his nose.  
“Why would she come back for me sir?” Ody’s voice grew louder in frustration, “If you don't mind me speaking freely, that would be stupid. If she came back, she'd risk her freedom for a dying kid. Plus, I was raised for this. Wasn't I sir? Just a sheep for the slaughter in the name of science and country.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Well that was a bust,” Alex mumbled.   
A headache had formed over my eyes, “this girl is actually making me work for my paycheck.”  
Charlie snickered.  
“Time for me to get some shut eye, boys,” I nodded toward my brothers. “I’ll be back in twelve.”   
Triton, like any good sidekick, met me as I opened the door about five miles from the main hub of the base. She was a perfect dog. I walked into my small kitchen, the excited shepherd on my heels. I set her food on the ground, and she sat back patiently waiting for it.   
“Good dog,” I mumble as I scratched between her ears. I needed more time to play with her.   
I started some leftovers in the microwave. One whiff of the fridge meant it was time to throw everything out. While the microwave hummed, I threw Triton’s toy ball up and down the hall for her to chase. Like I said, I should play with her more.   
The three day old spaghetti was still decent when I took my first bite on the couch. I settled in for a movie, still throwing the ball for my dog.   
Instead of sleeping on my couch, I made the effort to my room for more sleep before work again. 

“What can I help you with today, Captain?” 03 said from his bed when I walked in.   
“Do you know who I am?”  
03 didn’t stop staring at the ceiling, tossing a baseball up and down. “Givens-comma-Ryan Jacob. Six-foot-zero-inches. Born in Richmond, Virginia to two parents, one older sibling. Graduated top of your class in the army at Pendleton, recruited from Indonesia after a performance of saving two men in the field.” He looked at me, “You’re smart. A leader. Good at being a soldier. And now a glorified baby sitter for us. Sir.”   
He caught me a little off guard, but I shook it away, “You do your homework.”   
03 went back to throwing the baseball, “have to.”   
Their bedrooms didn’t have much. These walls are inevitably the last things this proto-soldier, this child, would see when he died.   
“What are you dying of?”  
He sat up on the bed, "I don't know sir."  
It'd been 72 hours since Scott interviewed 03 and he already looked worse. His skin was losing its tan color. His dark veins more prevalent now.   
"Were just... experiments sir. We are the trial and error. I'm the error. I’m a failed prototype. They’re trying everything, but it’s not working.”  
I needed him to open up more. I needed to know more about Chaos and her habits.   
"Would you like to play catch outside?"   
He raised an eyebrow at me, suspicious of me. He had every right to be - I wasn't there to be his friend. I'm looking for missing property.  
He swung his feet over the side of the bed and tossed the ball at me, "Okay, Captain." 

We tossed the ball back and forth for about fifteen minutes in silence. The only sounds I could hear in the court yard was the sound of quiet cracking and popping. The cage was constantly on, constantly popping, constantly reminding them that they were trapped. Trapped in twenty-four-hour boot camp, seven days a week, 365 days a year.   
He had an arm on him, I'll give him that.  
"Why were you and Chaos so close?" I asked.  
He hurled a ball back at me, "she was nice to me."   
I slung it back, it hit is mitt with tuff sound. "What made her nice?"  
The ball slammed back into my glove.  
He shrugged, "we have school every day. We learn things. But there are things she explained to me that I never learned in my classes."  
I nodded, listening to the popping, "like what?"  
Ody was thoughtful for a moment. Very quietly, he said, "She taught me how to cook."   
I smiled, "I can use a microwave."   
"An idiot could use a microwave," Ody scoffed.   
"I'm offended."  
Ody kind of smirked, "I don't feel bad that I offended you."   
On a deeper note, his face changed. He held the ball in his hands, turning it over, contemplating something.   
"She made me feel human." 

"I want to see their files," I told Mateo, one of my comrades sitting behind a table in the conference room. He was buried in papers up to his eyes.   
Mateo's chocolate eyes looked up at me, "who's files, Ryan?"   
"Chaos and Ody."   
He raised an eyebrow, "their entire files? It's a lot of information, a lot of it is kind of meaningless."   
I rubbed my eyes, "look Mateo, I'm on a roll. Potentially."   
Mateo gave me an up and down glance. "Isn't your shift about over? You look like hell, Givens. Go home. Sleep. It can wait 12 hours."   
I took a step back. There were twenty other men working on this. I didn't have to be the only one looking. "I'll be back in 12 hours."   
Mateo grinned, "never seen you so determined."   
"I like a challenge."


End file.
